I’ve thought about this before so I’ll throw my 2c in.
It is natural to consider the question in terms of how you think NOW. But the question should be asked with the knowledge that your mental abilities will improve with the acquisition of new information. This would change your perspective and ultimately your ability to deal with the situation.
The paradox is that if you are immortal then you would be infinite by birth (which would be a good name for a band).
Kind of reminds me of the book * Life, The Universe, and Eveything *. In this part, Ford and Arthur are stranded on prehistoric Earth.
Arthur: I will go mad!
Ford: I went mad for a while, did me no good. I decided I was a lemon for a few weeks, and jumped into a lake of gin and tonic.
How did I forget another character in this book that relates to this?!
And I quote," Wowbangger the Infinately prolonged was-indeed, is-one of the Universe’s very few Immortal beings… Most of those who are born immortal instinctivly know how to cope with it, but Wowbangger was not one of them… He has had his immortality inadvertantly thrust upon him by an unfortunate accident with an irrational particle accelerator, a liquid lunch, and a pair of rubber bands…To begin with it was fun; we had a ball, lived dangerously, taking risks, cleaning the hell up with long-term investments, and generally just outliving the hell out of everybody… Things began to pall for him. The merry smiles he used to wear at other people’s funerals began to fade. He began to despise everyone in the Universe…This was the point at which he concieved his purpose, the thing that would drive him on, and which, as far as he could see, would drive him on forever. It was this. He would insult everone in the Universe."
Novel approach to a never-ending life.
In John Varley’s Nine Worlds stories, medical technology has progressed to the point wher everyone is functionally immortal. The most common causes of death are suicide, accident, and murder, with accidents being exceedingly rare, and murder almost unheard of (technology being what it is, if you kill someone, they’ll be cloned and up walking around the next day, while you’ll almost certainly be caught and executed). The typical reason cited for suicide is boredom, which typically sets in sometime after two or three centuries.
For an excellent immortality with invulnerability story, one need look no further than Tuck Everlasting. A family of four, a couple in late middle age and their two sons, one about 16 and the other in his early 20’s, and their horse, become immortal after drinking from a magic spring. The author, Natalie Babbit, cleverly set up her family of immortals to avoid one possible thorny issue by not having a female of child-bearing age become immortal.
The older son marries and has children, but is shunned by his community and family when they realize he’s not getting any older. The two sons wander the world, the older one learning what he can, but forever lonely because he knows he can never have a real family. The younger son seems to revel in it, playing it as a grand adventure, but we find out later that he’s not quite as light-hearted as he seems.
Things come to a head when a little girl discovers the secret and the spring, and an older man who’s figured out the what but not the how also finds them. This leads to some really wonderful dialog between the father of the family and the little girl. The essense of his message to her is that life loses a lot of its meaning when you know you can’t die, because you can never fully participate. Knowing that you are someday going to die brings a spark to your existence.
It’s like a Ferris wheel. It’s exiting when you first get on, but pretty soon you’re ready to go on to other things. For the Tucks, immortality was like being on that wheel and unable to get off.
I don’t entirely agree with Tuck, but he makes a compelling case, and the book is a wonderful read. Don’t let it’s being a children’s book stop you, it’s just a good story period.
I’m kind of with clairobscur on this one, but at a smaller scale. Putting aside all the terrible things other people might do (or attempt to do) to you, what about if you are just out for a stroll someday and fall into an oubliette? I’ve never thought about it in quite this way before, but I suppose it’s somewhat of a mercy that if one falls into an oubliette and is not immortal, and is not rescued, that death will come relatively quickly.
Yep, that’s the sort of thing that would happen to me. I’d realize I was immortal, and a week later, fall into an oubliette. I agree that almost anyone, immortal or not, would eventually be at least a little touched in the head after spending decades down in a well. In a strange way, you’d almost have to be a little more careful, or at least careful in different ways, to avoid scenarios of being trapped like that if you were immortal. Sure, you can walk down the street in a war-ravaged nation with gunfire zipping all around you, but become afraid to ever take a tour of medieval castles. (Although, on a tour, they’d probably rescue you, but you never know.)
Provided you are less prone to wacky accidents than I am, I would like to think that there are some aspects of being immortal that might become evident in practice that would make up for the sadder implications. Yes, it’s terrible to see your best friend grow old and die, but it would be sort of cool to eventually see your best friend’s great-great-great grandson and be able to see some of your friend’s traits in him.
“assuming other super-human abilities which aren’t implied by immortality” has nothing to do with the age at which you become immortal. The OP suggested that you become immortal in your mid to late 20’s.
Not at all. That person may have always had those abilities. And if they want to prove that person was never human… well, they can try, but I don’t think that matters, as they’re still a “person” and were born in the U.S. (with records to prove it).
Absolutely there would be debate. There’s debate about everything. That’s kinda part of my point… yes, some part of the population would want rid of such a being, but some wouldn’t care, and some would actively want to keep them around.
Bolding mine. Is this just wild speculation on your part, or do you have some valid evidence to back this up? When I assert that the population will be split along for/against/apathetic lines, I have evidence - because that’s what they’ve done on every issue since the beginning of recorded history.
“Immortality” can come in a lot of different forms.
Maybe. It’s impossible to speculate how long one would actually be detained in those situations.
Wild speculation. The entirety of the human race except the immortal may be long dead before anyone ever manages to imprison him.
Some people fear and loathe the new and different. Some people habitually embrace the new and different.
I request proof.
Further… the “risk” of such an inconvenience… while present - is not necessarily more weighty than the actual guaranteed inconvenience of trying to hide one’s identity from the public. Despite Duncan McLeod in Highlander having no trouble passing his estate down from one fake heir to another, it really isn’t so simple.
You seem to be taking it for granted that it would happen.
Also, keep in mind, after a few hundred years, the public will become used to the idea of an immortal running around.
And my assumption is that you wouldn’t.
Indeed, rock. Igneous rock, if I remember my geology. I believe volcano leavings tend to be less solid than the underground solid masses of “bedrock”.
Again, there are different varieties of immortality.
Point one : Don’t assume frailty. The OP specified a person in the prime of their life.
Point two : It is not difficult to slip ropes or handcuffs if one is invulnerable. How? With ropes, rubbing against any surface rapidly will fray them. If one is invulnerable, one’s own skin might suffice. For handcuffs, one’s hand just needs to be compressed far enough… the base of the thumb pushed in far enough… to approach the size of the wrist. When one doesn’t have to worry about breaking bone or tearing cartilage, this would become substantially easier.
It takes all kinds.
Speaking for myself, my reaction would be… ‘Wow, that’s very interesting. I wonder how that happened? Can I be immortal too?’
But if the immortal’s civil rights were being infringed, you can be sure that a large portion of the country (talking about the U.S. here, as I’m most familiar with that political climate) would be up in arms about it, yes.
Never said the immortal creates a cult deliberately. These things sometimes arise independently.
Again, after you’re around for a looooong time, the public will cease to care.
Plus you’ll accumulate assets and information that make you ultimately harder to “dispose” of.
This says nothing… it’s a tautology. It translates as… “Given enough time for the matter in the universe to reverse polarity and turn into antimatter, the matter in the universe will reverse polarity and turn into antimatter.”
Well, duh.
It’s meaningless, though, if the time required is longer than the ultimate lifespan of the universe. And it’s meaningless to say the majority will turn on you inevitably because there’s a nonzero chance of it happening… the human race may be extinct before it ever happens.
Nope, not what I’m saying at all. You said it would happened “day after day, year after year…” - implying continual harrassment until the expiration of the human race. I don’t buy it.
Sigh. One, it wouldn’t be complete sensory deprivation. Two, You’d be amazed what I can tolerate. You can’t prove you’d go crazy in those situations. You think you would. I think I wouldn’t.
“Superhuman”. I don’t like threats. People who threaten me to get me to do something find that I do the opposite or nothing at all. I’m assuming that the variety of invulnerability here is a pain-free one, because I am not confident of my ability to resist programmatically-applied pain. Apart from that, they’re only going to succeed in making me angry, assuming I was invulnerable.
Not all that many, really.
Gosh, I might be devastated by your rapier-wit, if you were addressing something I’d actually said.
“In the end, it was the Sunday afternoons he couldn’t cope with, and that terrible listlessness that starts to set in at about 2:55, when you know that you’ve taken all the baths you can usefully take that day, that however hard you stare at any given paragraph in the newspaper you will never actually read it, or use the revolutionary new pruning technique it describes, and that as you stare at the clock the hands will move relentlessly on to four o’clock, and you will enter the long dark tea-time of the soul.”
(Also from LtU&E, one of the bits that superduperman skipped over but I always liked. :D)
Myself, I kinda think being immortal would rock. There never seems to be enough hours in the day or days in the week, so having an unlimited number of weeks might help - finally get a chance to finish writing all the things I want to write. Plus cleaning up on the long-term investments. 
There does seem to be something vaguely squicky about the idea that my existence would keep going on forever despite anything I might try to bring it to an end, when I was well and truly tired of the cosmos, though. (shrugs)
Well, I have a million and a half story ideas that I’d love to spend the next few millenia writing, and while I may run out of those eventually, the possible permutations of characters, worlds, and situations might be large enough that I could be entertained for a very, very long time indeed.
(Anybody want to start The Immortal Writers’ Club? :D)
And maybe a side effect of being immortal is that I lose my long-term memory and have to start tattooing little notes to my body… 
I’d finally have the time to both read the straight dope and do all the other things I want to do.
I’d make a sculpture out of an entire mountain, with a hammer and chisel.
I’d do all sorts of weird experiments on myself, eventually becomming completely unrecognizable.
How would you know you were immortal unless you’d specifically been told.Take Lazarus Long who just ages incredibly slowly.Eventually he will die,in hundreds or thousands of years.So every day might be the one that he finally shuffles off the coil.I might be flattened by a bus tomorrow.But I might still be here in 150 years time.It’s only with the certainty of knowing you ARE immortal that you could go off and start building your cathedral.
i’ll just wait for technology to catch up so i can build my own virtual world with software sophisticated enough to equal or exceed the human brain. i may or may not decree that they should worship my likeness.
Trappeed in bedrock? Not complete sensory deprevation? Howszat?
Anyway, you would be surprised what you can’t tolerate. Everybody likes to think “they” would survive and pull through whatever is pushed at them, but in the end, we are all very similar. Some a bit stronger than others, but when it comes to sensory deprevation, even the strongest are affected. Even you. And immortality in itself implies no invulnerabilty to psychological duress.
While the immortality implies no special resistance to psychological duress, speaking from my perspective, the very few anxieties I have are all completely rendered null and void if I should become immortal/invulnerable. And for random Joe Average, I speculate you’d be quite surprised what he can tolerate with the underlying knowledge that “Well, I’m immortal… so while I may be subjected to this now, it can’t really hurt me, and I’ll still be in peak condition when I’m out of this situation.”
As for the sensory deprivation issue - one, it’s not bedrock, it’s lava rock. Two, there are solid textures to feel. There are vibrations to hear. You’d have to be buried pretty deep to block out sounds. You would be visually deprived, true. But that’s not complete.
Ok, lavarock. Sensory deprivation in a dark room is considered complete. There are still sounds- you breathing, farting, etc. There is still tactile senses. And you know it isn’t going to hurt you physically. People still break, people still go insane. Psychological trauma isn’t always linked to fear of injury.
And anyhow, if lavarock was surrounding you on all sides, pressing against you completely, you would not “feel” it after a brief period of time. Just like you don’t feel something that you have been touching for awhile. The brain tends to reacts to changes in pressures and not constant pressures. The sounds would probably only be deep basey sounds from the volcano, if any sounds at all. Those would not provide enough sensory stimulation to provide stability.
It is? By whom? “This room completely blocks sensory input… well, except for four of them.” Sounds like the “science” of psychology has come a long way.
Pfft.
I honestly don’t think it’d bother me all that much if I didn’t have to worry about :
1.) What if I die before I get out?
2.) What if I can’t get food and water?
It’d be disconcerting, and one would lose track of the passage of time, but it would not qualify as crazy-making.
Tell you what, let’s drop you in a volcano for a few weeks and see how you do.
Well, it isn’t surprising to see somebody with an high opinion of themselves think they are immune to psychological trauma, or that they would “pull through” it. I am telling you, the trauma that occurs has nothing to do with fear of lack of food or harm. It isn’t that at all. Do you want me to say it again? Insult the field of psychology all you want, but it doesn’t support your argument one way or another.
Sensory deprivation trauma is a real thing, has nothing to do with Psychology’s weakneses as a science and is something that happens with everybody.
Tell you what, lock yourself in a dark closet for 12 hours, bring plenty of food, and have nothing in there that would harm you. Have a relative lock you in and not unlock the door for 12 hours. You wouldn’t be in danger of starving, you trust your friend or relative to unlock the door, and you will not be harmed in any way, so you have no danger of psychological trauma, right? Uh huh.
“Think” what you want, but you have no evidence or even a rational explanation supporting your argument. Might as well “think” you will win the lottery while you are at it.
You can say it as many times as you like, it doesn’t make it true, or proven, or even likely.
Happens with everybody? Generalize much? I don’t recall the American Psychology Association coming door to door and locking each family member in a closet for twelve hours. Maybe I was so traumatized that I blocked it out. :rolleyes:
As it happens, I’ve given you a rational explanation… you choose not to see it as such. As for evidence, there’s none on either side, because there’s no immortals to actually test.
Are we assuming that you will be effectively tied up for all those decades?. If you can find a way to break out of your confinement, you can then start to chip away at the rocks, first with whatever (indestructable) parts of your body you can, then once you have a few tiny rocks, use them to chip off bigger rocks.
Remember, constant abrasion will wear down rock. So you will make progress even if you do not use other rock. Depending on the makeup of the rock, how deep you are, and the circumstances of your confinement you could be out within a decade. And go less insance because you are working towards a goal.
If you were buried under sandstone, I’d say you could be out in a year even under hundreds of feet of rock.